skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree, non-algorithmic work is the vast majority of programming work today because most of it is related to Application Programming.

The reason for this is that most Application Programming emphasizes the use and sufficient knowledge of a framework, rather than a full understanding of CS fundamentals.

While those with CS have a head start in understanding frameworks quickly and utilizing them effectively, self-taught programmers can catch up rather quickly if the framework is well written and geared towards them. And fast majority of frameworks trend towards this.

Application programmers generally need to know the ins and outs of a framework and this knowledge often carries them further than the fundamentals.

All that being said, after 10 years of application programming, I'm slowly trying to re-learn much of my CS material out of my own personal interest and get off the framework treadmill. It's been a fun process to rediscover fundamentals after learning them over 10 years ago.

But let's be realistic about it, most app programmers have no interest in CS fundamentals or theory unless it has some direct context to their daily work.
Did anyone permit for the possibility that some people may be wired to have an affinity for one and some for the other?
This is a less extreme way of saying that understanding Newtonian physics will make one a superior shooter in basketball.

Understanding CS theory is a way of testing intelligence, sure. But the author betrays his own lack of familiarity with the industry today in implying that it is required knowledge to be an effective developer.
Rich people problems (sigh)
This will be great for the first hundred or so people that order it. After that you'll just end up with SARAH1254. You might as well just have a phone number.
I very much like the 'Will you pay $X question' since it pushes them into whether they will really buy this. This question may be less useful in a B2C context where it's more of an impulse and less well thought out. But makes a LOT of sense in B2B, where the budgeting and RoI processes are much better thought through.

P.S. LoI's make more sense in a very big business context. But I doubt they'd mean much for a small SaaS offering. Also, not many potential customers will be so needy that they'd go to the trouble of a formal LoI. An email should be sufficient at this stage.
> I don't think that's true.

Then I'm gonna bet that you never worked at Bell Labs.

> I think doing great work in the major problems in your field of choice are the exact heights that entrepreneurialism should strive for.

The time scale is vastly different. Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years, and VCs have an even shorter attention span. Hell, funding events (which require showing progress) every two years are considered successful in the startup culture.
It depends on the question you are asking!

You will need to estimate the conversion rate based on what you see in real life, when you go from alpha to closed beta, how many people who said they'd take, actually take it.

Formal LoI's are good if you can get them, but don't really mean much, since they are by definition no commitment. And at this stage, they don't know what they're getting either.
Google knows an awful lot more about my interests, but a hell of a lot less about my associations, or things that I have actually done, than facebook.
Given all the bad things parts of the government were involved in, maybe it wouldn't actually be that bad of an idea to be shizophrenically suspicious of itself.. checks and balances, right?
> 18. Find someone else's code that does amazing things but is unintelligible. Refactor it. Then throw it away

Throw away the unintelligible code, or throw away the refactor?
The only thing that banning Huawei is sure to accomplish is choking innovation.

It's reasonable to worry about security in telecommunications, but you'd be hard-pressed to find any telecom that doesn't manufacture equipment in China including Ericsson, Huawei's biggest competitor. Huawei has too much to lose from spying, and I'd personally be more worried about these non-Chinese companies which rely so heavily on Chinese subsidies and subcontracting.

One legitimate concern about Huawei though is transparency. Because it is privately held and not listed on any stock market, it is not subject to reporting requirements and it's ownership structure is allowed to remain secretive. However, these aren't grounds for an outright ban.
I'm a 48 year old developer. I'm currently doing a bit of contracting on the side while starting my own company. I can still see myself doing this in another 10 years despite my current rate of decline.

Most 50+ developers "having a pretty bad time" have made the following mistake:

They became highly paid experts in technology that was important when they were 30.

Focus might work out for you, my uncle made a boat load of money in the late 90's when he was 58. Mostly because he was an expert Cobol programmer. But more than likely you will regret it in 10 years.

Stay current. Stay passionate. Stay active on Slashdot, HN, or whatever the next one is. I'm currently building using Django/jQuery/Bootstrap. My last project was GAE. I love what I do.
The problem I present is that Jane doesn't want anyone to know because she doesn't want undesirables, such as coworkers or family, to know. It's not likely that someone will vindictively send pictures of Jane having what they, if they were at the party to take pictures in the first place, likely consider to be harmless fun. The problem is unintentional damage, which, as you say, is amplified by social media.

That said, the party example was weak. I opened with it because it was an easy example of oversight on the part of the user.
"Checks all arguments and asserts critical assumptions in code "

Wait, I just finished code complete, and it told me that you specifically _don't_ check all arguments throughout your program. Instead, you choose a list of classes at that will check arguments for input as a firewall, and assume all classes behind those logically will receive the correct, sanitized input.

Did I misunderstand this?
Thanks! I'm actually on Ubuntu just now (I haven't used Windows in quite a while), so I'll have to try this.
I imagine the “rather shockingly” clause was a misplaced attempt at irony. I cannot think of any other reason the author would put that there.
Tonight With Lee Seung Gi in Indonesia
Patents work for protecting the investment in development and clinical trials, sure, but do they work optimally? Are there better ways to finance these processes?

Keep in mind that the cost way pay for these patents is a dramatically higher price for life-saving (or life-improving) treatments. Could we not cut out the middle-man and redirect a portion of those higher costs to fund research and clinical trials directly (i.e. in the form of taxes)?
This is about trade/competition and has little to do with security. I have no inside information concerning this, but I doubt there are any real security concerns. Methinks Cisco and Juniper are just better at lobbying congress than ZTE or Hauwei. China has been playing fast and loose with WTA rules regarding subsidizing industry and this is most likely retaliation.
Pure CSS 1:1 aspect ratio spirograph · CodePen
Perhaps they would be more accommodating if the US Gov't hadn't asked our networking and phone companies to put surveillance backdoors into gear [1] for better wire tapping. This seems to be a standard deal, the Greeks were all up in arms because of it (in their case it was the Vodaphone network [2] which had state sponsored built in holes.

The could take the high road and order Cisco and AT&T to make their gear un-tappable so that they would be sure no Nation-state could use it to spy on us, of course that would make them sad.

[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48695618/ns/technology_and_scien...

[2] http://www.salon.com/2012/05/06/surveillance_state_democracy...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%...
I address this. It was something of a weak example, but I do mention that Jane realizes her privacy settings were inadequate, at least for tagging. It's already too late at this point. That particular example was one of oversight on the part of the user. I considered it to be a good starting point.
"Emulating BMW instead of Benz" is good advice, however. If they want to make a product that's more awesome than a comparable ICE, then they need to include the service program in the price of the car.
Why do people who like to ask O(N) questions have this obsession with sorting algorithms?
One of the bad ideas discussed is functional programming (particulary the side-effect free aspect of it), another one is "passing parameters by name" which was proposed as one of the possible semantic for passing parameters in Algol. And which works like ruby blocks, IIUC. Seems funny that now those are mostly considered good ideas.

All in all - most of the bad ideas seems to be things that struck the wrong balance between being fast/cheap to do in hardware and being a clean design. Either some feature went so far with making things easy for programmer, that it was too expansive to implement or too slow, or it went too far the other way - making it too easy to mess things up in the pursue of fast execution/cheap implementation.
i wish it had described how people were asked. i guess it's through some graphical means. anyone know (original paper is paywalled)?
Your last couple of paragraphs really bother me. I see a lot of very smart people talking the same way. Ask yourself if this rings any bells:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_Syndrome

The reason a technical co-founder would work on your idea is that you have a great idea, solid feedback, and the drive to figure out what that idea really means. Plus the skills necessary to deal with all the mushy, human side of product development, producing a clean stream of things to build.

The last time I started something, my co-founder did all of that, plus all the fundraising. I got a lot less than 50%, and thought it was a fair deal. As the founder and visionary, you should avoid giving up more than 49% for as long as possible, hopefully ever, because then you give up control.

At startup events I see plenty of arrogant idiots who have done no more than you (and often less) looking for co-founders and investment. Your natural humility is an asset when it comes to building products, because it means you will listen to your users and serve them well. But in the realm of entrepreneurship, it will hurt you, because you will reflexively defer to people who act more confident.

This is your idea. Nobody will ever love it as much as you. Take it and run. As hard as you can. It may work and it may not, but don't let it be because you didn't believe in yourself.
"Moreover, any visit to a non-Tesla shop--even for something as simple as tire rotation--will also void the warranty. Period."

That might get them into trouble, there are laws protecting independent service shops. This is a fought battle and the manufacture lost.
Yes, but at his expense. With just text, it's hard to indicate friendly teasing with people you don't know well.
How Facebook Will Find Its Next Billion Users
Now you, too, can test 41 shades of blue.
How to Hack the Press
I'm assuming that this only works if both parties have Sprint? It seems pretty pointless if so, even without taking the namespace collisions into account.

Also: who remembers phone numbers nowadays? I already have a phone that does that for me.
This reaction seems a bit too simplistic for me. Assuming that market share + competitive-niceties is the only issue to be evaluated for fairness within capitalism is a rather short-sighted view in the current technology world.

In the 90s (relative to now), Microsoft's scenario involved very specific and identifiable things on which to evaluate the market from an anti-trust point of view. It wasn't just things like 98% of the OS market or browser bundling; these were very concrete things that any person could look at and visibly see. In a fast-growing market without a lot of players, it was easy to see that MSFT was largely the only game in town.

Nowadays it is much more complex. Who cares about OS installations anymore (besides MS Windows division?) Back in the 90s, categories such as search weren't yet a critical part of the mainstream. What about personal data (social networks) or advertising (display/text)? Consider a more granular scenario: when Twitter or Facebook makes an API policy change that forces third-parties who have built upon their API into wholesale business changes, is that anti-competitive? The "low switching costs" that service providers mention isn't quite so cut-and-dried.

It seems to me we could use some evolved thinking on the subject. Continuing to apply the simple metrics used with the MSFT anti-trust evaluation feels outdated.
Most people I know don't bother memorizing phone numbers anymore anyway - so I'm not sure what problem this is solving.
The Falcon 9 has two engine-out capability.
مشاهدة جنازة الرئيس الجزائرى الشاذلى بن جديد يوتيوب فيديو صور اليوم الاثنين
I think that's a hardware acceleration issue, since these filters tend to be applied with GL shaders.
I believe early exit is strictly better than `goto end`. There's no language enforcement requiring the "end" label to be at the end of the function. If there was, I wouldn't mind the use of `goto end`. I don't think your argument is persuasive to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
Ha, wow, I think am a terrible computer scientist and software engineer, but probably a decent to maybe even good programmer.
I believe Falcon 9 has 2 engine out capability.
That's where Android Intent system shines ;)

My bet that Apple will provide something similar in the future. It's just too good. All that sharing stuff in Android, i really miss it on my iPad, it's imo the biggest feature difference between those two OS today.
> I don't see how understanding asymptotic notation negatively affects someone's programming ability

Why would it make them worse?* I was just arguing it doesn't necessarily make them better. Just because you are a bad developer doesn't mean you get better when you learn about asymptotic behavior or heapsort or O-notation. Lots of really bad developers know about those things. And lots of really bad developers don't know about them as well.

Knowledge of those items is neither sufficient nor necessary to be either a competent or incompetent developer (at least for reasonable definitions of both competent and developer).

* Ok - maybe too much knowledge has some odd 2nd order negative effects on productivity: analysis paralysis, over-confidence, unwillingness to ask for help, programming toward a theoretically pure solution rather than a pragmatic solution.
An Open Letter to Tim Cook and Apple
This will make it really easy to spam people too
This is a problem with social media, though. Before it, there would be a picture of me at a party that no one ever saw. Now, there is a searchable by name picture of me at a party that has been tagged along with every other picture of that party, with times, location, and other attendees determinable in the same way for each.

By the way, this will also be a picture that no one will see, except for the people that are interested in the fact that I'm going to parties, the people that I wanted to hide that fact from. The picture hasn't been made more interesting, it has just been attached to 100 or more indexes, with no lifespan.
My third-party iOS browser uses its own renderer and they don't seem to have issues with it. However, it is designed for niche cases and does not implement the full W3C spec., so I guess that is what they really have issues with?
>Most people consider this immoral too.

Morality is relative and totally arbitrary (and also influenced by the regime). Let's leave it out of the discussion.

>taking someone's ideas and passing them off as your own.

Everybody knows that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Claiming ownership of most ideas flies in the face of historical fact. Patents try to reconcile this with prior art and tests of non-obviousness but these are often subjective and highly flawed.
We seem to trust all of the chips and silicon we purchase from China. Why single out and ban a telecom?
Apple v. Samsung: More Unredacted Documents Surface
> Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years

What about the SpaceX's of the world? Founded in 2002; docked with the ISS in 2012.
>> Google did a thorough benchmark... <<

No. One person employed at Google did a comparison and lots of other people (including some others employed at Google) explained what they thought was wrong with that comparison.
one thing the most successful - truly succesful - programmers i know or have heard of do, is understand the importance of the big idea, of designing something worth designing.

on the previous article (do you want to be doing this when you're 50), i tried to submit the following comment.

"
Well, a programmer can - in a matter of hours, or at most days/weeks - assemble a factory performing the work of 10,000 full-time highly trained workers (actually more, we're talking billions of operations per second), at a total direct cost of a couple of coffees and use of a device costing few hundred dollars new, and then fully own all rights to the factory, and operate it full-time for about the cost of a normal person's phone bill per month (server instances). So the question isn't why there are millions of high-paying jobs to do so for someone else with the resulting rights and ownership by someone else:

the question is why anyone takes any of these jobs. why not build your own damn factory. It's usually only because you lack some of the skills (design, business development, marketing, choosing what to produce, etc).

so, team up with a cofounder. hence: hacker news. well, there is one downside here. the programmers who work here would never team up with a designer who knows just what to build. instead they both get hired by someone who does. the designer gets hired at a low rate, then the programmer gets hired at a high rate, just because the person hiring the two knows what is needed to get the factory producing something people will pay for: but the programmer (readers on this very article right here at hacker news), doesn't.

so yeah there are millions of jobs for you to build value for others, but it's just because you're not quite wise enough enough not to need these jobs.

(suppose i'm such a designer. split a company 60/40 with me? No, you would not. But work for 1.5 my wage at the same company, so that neither of us gets to reap the benefits. yes you would.)
"
YT runs on html5 as well, and nobody died, either. But Flash is on the way to the grave, apparently. Also, if you haven't noticed, there is no Flash support on iOS, support for Android is close to none, and the Windows and Linux versions are extremely resource-hungry. In this sense, anything built on Flash is a very bad replacement for anything.

Moreover, I'd say that the standard to measure against is "how is this a significant improvement over the existing state," not "at least it's not lethal."
Start it as an LLC. You'll make the Subchapter S adoption for the IRS. It used to be that VC's would not fund an LLC, but that is not the case anymore.

You can change your LLC into a C-Corp any time, or you can form an LLC and have it acquire the LLC for tracking purposes if your VC wants a c-corp.

LLC's pay taxes as an S-Corp, which means all the income and expenses pass through to you, the owner, and taxes get paid on the profit based on your personal tax rate.
How to bring textured entities in Windows Phones
Exactly what I was thinking. Feels like if this takes off, there will be a "land grab" like any single-domain sort of thing. So effectively, this is the equivalent of just exchanging a phone number for a username, and that might not be an improvement. Kinda weird.
Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others launch webplatform.org
> Simply choose multiple choice questions and stack the answers in the right order (people usually click in certain pattern when doing it at "random").

Ideally, you could randomize the order of the answers for each person, and later divide them up by order presented to detect any bias. This is something that online surveys make much easier than paper surveys.
> So why are there exactly 4x4 icons you can move left and right, above a bar with 4 fixed icons?

Because the screen is a certain size and icons need to be big enough and small enough, up-down scrolling would be less ergonomic (longer swipes to switch pages), and there are a few features you always want access to, respectively.

How else would you do it?

As for the maps picture, I have a feeling that's faked, or that it's Google's mapping app, in which case consistent interface would be downright expected.
This is required if Tesla wants to survive as a car company. It reads like a way to distribute the impact of the large problems that are going to crop up early on (battery failure, recall for some part going wonky, Etc)
Parsing Tesla's $600 fee, let's allocate $100 for the wiper blades, roadside assistance, monitoring, and software update features.

What about the brake pads mentioned in the previous paragraph? Replacement pads plus labour for fitting would run to $200 easily. I'll take most opportunities to bash Tesla but $600 a year is relatively cheap in my opinion.
Perhaps, it's not a hidden gem but a needed pursuit which most of us waited for. I know so many developers who were forced to use third party APIs (picplz etc.) just to have normal web experience on their application.

Anyway, this is good news for the web. Hope the browsers on tablets go beyond their 'mobile' paradigm and there is increase both in horsepower and adoption of web standards.
This is technically not a "bad" measure of performance, but the real danger is the word "competence." Imagine I am hiring two candidates, one has log(n) (level 3) competence across these charts, while the other has very mediocre/poor competence. What if I am working on an application is not performance-critical? What if the "incompetent" guy/girl works twice as fast, because he does not worry about crafting coding-works-of-art? What if the "incompetent" guy is three times cheaper to hire, and eager to prove him/herself, thus putting in extra hours voluntarily? What if I am hiring for a problem with a very specific domain, and expertise is required in only one area?
Even Nintendo implemented input type=file for the 3DS.
The first part of your post reads something like this:

>I believe X. (Disclaimer: a recently wrote an essay arguing in favor of X).

That's not a disclaimer! It's just an aside. A disclaimer would be more like

>It will be to my advantage if you believe X.

Although even that doesn't exactly follow the dictionary definition of a disclaimer, people do seem to generally mean it as a disclosure.
I would hardly call this "rich people problems". I know many who make roughly 60-80K a year, and I would certainly not call them rich, and they still purchase cars with a sticker price of 50K.

Is it a wise decision to make such a purchase? No. Is it commonplace? Yes.

Also, it's an early adopter price. It'll decrease a bit with time. This is a luxury car.

Also, this isn't Reddit. Contribute something of value to the conversation.
Does anyone know why it took so long to implement such a basic feature?
In the past, topology was little more than an amusing diversion for mathematicians doodling about the difference between donuts and dumplings.

...what?
You're conflating all entrepeneurs with a very specific subset you're probably more familiar with.